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Full-Cost Gift Cards
There are four authorized gift card sellers on eBay: Giftcardmall, Paypal Digital Gifts, SVM Gift Cards, and Cardency. Paypal Digital sells e-gift cards while the others sell physical gift cards.
Usually, we post here on DoC about opportunities to purchase gift cards from these sellers at a discount. However, it’s often worthwhile to purchase full-cost gift cards on eBay due to a variety of factors (sometimes a combination of these factors):
- eBay Bucks We can get the standard 2% in eBay Bucks on the purchase of gift cards (with the exception of eBay gift cards), and we often get targeted with as much as 10% back in Bucks which can amount to a great discount on anything purchased on eBay.
- Portal We can get usually get at least 1% back on the purchase of gift cards. Currently, it’s possible to get 5% back – see Best Shopping Portal for eBay Purchases.
- Expiring eBay Credit You may have an eBay Bucks certificate or other similar eBay credits which are expiring soon and buying gift cards (including eBay gift cards) is a good way of using those up.
- Coupons There’s a 10% off coupon which pops up randomly in targeted eBay accounts and there’s also public coupon codes which pop up every once in a while that offer 15% off all eBay purchases. Buying gift cards is a fast and easy way to take advantage of these offers.
- Use up eBay Gift Cards It’s often possible to purchase eBay gift cards at a discount. You can then turn the eBay gift card into any other gift card available for purchase on eBay that you choose.
- Chase INK Purchases made from Paypal Digital Gifts on eBay have been working to get the bonus rate of 5x rewards with the Chase INK cards. (Purchases from all other sellers on eBay won’t earn this bonus rate.)
Purpose of this List
Many struggle figuring out what to buy in the above scenarios, especially when there are time-sensitive deals which don’t allow lingering. The focus of this post is to lay out some of the options available. Of course, the best deal is whichever gift card you’ll be able to make use of, but we listed below many of the more popular options for quick reference. If you buy lots of gift cards on eBay, you may find it useful to bookmark this page. We’ll also reference it in future posts when referring to ways of making use of various eBay offers.
Another thing we accomplished in this post is finding the best shipping rate on each gift card. All e-gift cards ship free, but physical gift cards usually have a shipping fee. Some of the cards are sold be multiple sellers and it’s worth buying from the seller who offers the lowest shipping fee. For example, Sears gift cards ship free from SVM but come with a $3 shipping fee from Giftcardmall. There are many such examples.
One thing to keep in mind is that with regards to extremely time-sensitive deals (e.g. a 15% off publicly available coupon), it may be worth heading straight for the physical gift cards and not the e-gift cards since Paypal is more prone to making the checkout process difficult for e-gift card purchases, see The Obscure Limits of Paypal Digital Gifts.
Also note that we rounded off the shipping costs to make an easier read; for example, a $3.95 fee we recorded as $4. And we also assumed the purchase of the highest denomination cards when calculating the shipping fees.
Links to Gift Card Sellers on eBay
Full list of e-gift cards from Paypal Digital Gifts on eBay
Full list of physical gift cards from Giftcardmall on eBay
Full list of physical gift cards from SVM Gift Cards on eBay
Full list of physical gift cards from Cardency on eBay
Popular Physical Gift Cards
- eBay gift card – free shipping
- $250-$500 Sears – free shipping
- $50-$100 Sears – free shipping
- Kmart – free shipping
- Staples – shipping is $1.50 per card
- $500 Home Depot – $4 per card
- $250 Home Depot – $3 per card
- $500 Lowes – free shipping
- Lowe’s – shipping is $1.50 per card
- Gamestop – shipping is $1 per card
- Groupon – shipping is $1 per card
- Toys R Us – free shipping
- Babies R Us – free shipping
- Bed Bath & Beyond – free shipping
- CVS – shipping is $1 per card
Gas Gift Cards
- $250 Exxon/Mobil gift card, shipping is $5 per card
- $250 BP gift card, shipping is $5 per card
- $250 Chevron gift card, shipping is $5 per card
- $100 Exxon – shipping is $4 per card
- $100 BP – shipping is $4 per card
- $100 Sunoco – shipping is $4 per card
- $100 Chevron/Texaco – shipping is $4 per card
- $100 76 – shipping is $4 per card
- $100 Concoco – shipping is $4 per card
- $100 Phillips 66 – shipping is $4 per card
- $100 Speedy – shipping is $4 per card
- $100 Marathon – shipping is $4 per card
- $100 Circle K – shipping is $4 per card
Popular E-Gift Cards
- $15-$200 eBay e-gift card – no shipping fee
- $5 eBay e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Staples e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Sears e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Best Buy e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Gamestop – no shipping fee
- iTunes e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Groupon e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Office Max e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Bed Bath & Beyond e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Dave & Buster e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Nintendo eShop Digital Card – no shipping fee
Restaurant Gift cards
- Domino’s e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Papa John’s e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Applebee’s e-gift card – no shipping fee
- TGI Fridays physical gift card – free shipping
- Darden e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Burger King e-gift card – no shipping fee
Travel-Related Gift Cards
- Hotels.com e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Hotels.com physical gift card – free shipping
- Southwest e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Airbnb e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Hyatt e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Hyatt physical gift card – $3 shipping fee for up to $500 card (use this link for $1 shipping fee per $100 card)
- American Airlines e-gift card – no shipping fee
- American Airlines physical gift card – free shipping
- Delta e-gift card – no shipping fee
- Global Hotels e-gift card – no shipping fee
Note that all the links in this post are our eBay affiliate links. We appreciate when you use our links, but you’ll do better for yourself by going through a shopping portal instead and getting the cashback or points that come along with it.
Please let us know if you see anything that needs to be added or updated.
View Comments (6)
Is there more info into the Global Hotels e-gift card? is it worth buying with discounted ebay card?
William – I had a question for ya. When you talk about buying these (for e.g.) discounted Target, Exxon Mobile, BP etc. gift cards on ebay and reselling them, I basically don’t see any point in that since there’s little to no profit. You can maybe use that to meet the spending requirement on a card, but other than that I don’t really see a reason why anyone would do it. Even if you consider this high cash back scenario:
1) Buy a $100 BP Gift Card on ebay for $95. Profit $5
2) Get 5X ebay bucks (10%). Profit $9.5
3) Get 2% cash back from credit card $1.9
4) Get 2% cash back from portal $1.9
Total profit $18.3 on one GC. You can hardly sell this for 88% of the value i.e. Loss = $12
Net profit = $6.3
I haven’t even added the shipping fee (some sellers now charge ~$3). I don’t think $6.3 is worth the risk of the seller shipping the card to you, and then the risk of you shipping the card to a buyer.
Yes, its another story if you don’t resell the card and use it yourself. You can pocket a good 18% profit that way. Do you recommend using the cards yourself? I’m talking about all kind of GCs, like Target, Walmart, Best Buy, HD, Exxon, BP etc.
Gas GC are currently not worth buying for regular prices. Resale rates have dropped quite a bit lately. Exxon used to sell for $91 - now they're @ $86 or so. Also SVM seems to have just recently revised their pricing strategy. Many gas cards used to be $10 = 10% off and free shipping. These days seem to be gone for now...
Yes, the $95 BP deal isn't the greatest for resell. A $90 deal would be more enticing, depending on how things stack up with the portal/bucks. There's also the eBay gift card factor - you can often get those at 10%+ discount adding substantially to your bottom line.
Great idea. It's out of stock now, but you are missing Delta Gift Cards
http://www.ebay.com/itm/262051492486?_trkparms=meid_vp%3D369cbcbcb68c410cac0e4a82f2e3f60c
Haha, I had it in the list from a few weeks ago when I wrote the post, then I rechecked today and saw it out of stock so I pulled it. There was also a change for the worse with Home Depot.